Anderson told us that while the Vista team at Microsoft has been working their collective tail off to ensure that they release a full-featured, bug-free product, they haven't been doing it alone.

Rail Simulator

Shadowrun

World In Conflict

Over 5 million people have downloaded the Vista and Office 2007 Beta, basically acting as guinea pigs by reporting any bugs and offering their opinions. We also learned that 50 lucky families in 7 countries have taken part in the "Life with Windows Vista" program. They received PCs with Vista installed, allowing them to not only find and report bugs (via a direct line to Microsoft tech support, no less), but to offer suggestions on how to make the product better for the everyday user. As an example, he pointed out the "Burn" button on Windows Photo Gallery, which allows users to quickly and easily create a disc full of images.

From there, we headed upstairs to check out some of the games on display. Many of these titles were at CES, including Age of Conan, Crysis, and World in Conflict. We spent the majority of our time playing Shadowrun, which seems to get more entertaining the more we play it. I should probably take this opportunity to mention that I won several matches against a gamer that was using a PC. Take that, controller naysayers! While we didn't get to see much of the Live Anywhere initiative in action, it's definitely an exciting development. I mean, how can you not get excited about being able to access your gamertag, saves, and downloads on a variety of machines?

As the day wound down, we spent some time checking out the games that will come with Vista, as well as some of the casual titles that will be coming to Xbox Live Arcade soon. Vista comes bundled with old favorites like Solitaire and Minesweeper (both of which feature some spiffy effects), as well as a completely addictive Mahjong game. On the casual games tip, I'm completely hooked on Luxor 2 (think Zuma, but more challenging) and Darwinia, which looks like something straight out of "Tron."